I am a comedy writer and occasional stand-up comedian. I am watching the bot explosion with great interest and, although I’m just starting to learn about them, I think that writing dialogue for bots is an avenue I want to explore.

I am trained as a UX designer and have been working in that field for the past year, although I wouldn’t call myself a master. I have picked up some light coding in the process, but my comfort level stops ends with HTML/CSS.

Please let me know if you recommend any particular resources for someone who wants to help create comic personalities for bots! My exploration is just beginning, and there’s a lot to learn.

Hi, Emerson, and welcome to chatbots.org!

Writing humorous dialog for chatbots is somewhat similar to writing dialog for a stand-up routine, I think (I would guess, as I’ve only ever written jokes for myself, long ago, and then only a few times… I enjoyed doing stand-up, but I don’t think I’m particularly good at it). The process is far more creative in nature than technical. The mechanics involved will vary greatly, however, depending on the chatbot platform that you wish to use. I’m most familiar with AIML-based chatbots, such as those found on Pandorabots, or that use Program O, so I can speak more accurately in that area than I could about other platforms such as ChatScript or BotLibre. I’m currently developing a series of tools for AIML botmasters, called the AIML Toolkit, a part of which is a “Simple AIML Input Tool” that allows users to create AIML files for their chatbots without all that fiddly “mucking about in Hyperspace” (sorry. Huge Hitchhikers Guide fan). The entire toolkit is still in it’s early stages, but it does have a bit of useful functionality, and the public is welcome to explore it’s features. I’m also fairly savvy with AIML, so can answer questions and provide guidance when necessary. some of the best resources when it comes to chatbots isn’t in the software, but in the community at large, so please be sure to avail yourself of our experience.

I still do Standup at my age. It’s actually the first thing I try when I get out of bed!! <cymbal crash>...I’m here all week!
A while back there was the Funniest Computer Ever contest. Not sure how the entrants finished but here’s a page from one using Elizabeth Perreau’s Program O. http://www.carloschow.com/#about

Regardless, Welcome to the Forum!

Yes, the link to that contest is here:
http://funniestcomputer.neurogrid.com/

I forget who won it on both the years it ran

Humor is a good place to start when programming chat bot dialogue. The easiest kinds of things your bot can do is one-liners. If your bot is being judged on its humanity, the one-liner may be thought of as a non-sequitur. So there is a real art to balancing jokes with informative answers. Some of the most well developed bots like El Bot, and Eugene Goostman are able to weave jokes into a dialog about their background stories.

As to how to go about learning how to write dialogue for the bot, you’ll have to find a platform that allows you the mechanisms you want to control. AIML has several variations, and has been around the longest, so it has versions that you can just start up and use on the web like Pandorabots.com, or if you want to make your own server and get into some more technical aspects, Program O is good. I have used both for different purposes.

ChatScript is a newer technology and is very versatile at the cost of being in development, so if you enjoy learning new programming techniques, it might be the one for you. The bot is written in C++, but the dialogue is ChatScript. One difference is that AIML script is an XML language, and ChatScript has its own syntax that is more free form.

Some of the older bots do not separate data from processing, they are programmed in Java or Visual Basic, and so on. I would recommend something where you don’t have to recompile every change that you make. Even so, the script you use will need to be reloaded to incorporate your new material.